Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Throwback time: The 1989 MILL title game

By Avry Lewis-McDougall

It may be the offseason but it dosent mean we cant provide some gems for NLL fans from the league vault! Check out one of the wildest games in league history going back to it's days as the MILL. The 1989 title game between the NY Saints and the Philadelphia Wings.

Take a look below...

Some points on this one,

-Even in the infancy of the league the Spectrum was still rocking! No matter what sport Philadelphia has been known to embrace it 154%. In the 1989 MILL season the Wings had over 14,000 fans per game and 74,876 fans in total at their home games that season.

-Have to love the REALLY lime green turf which is a joy to watch but should be assault on my eyeballs.

-Look at the stomping at 2:54, Lou Delligatti of the Wings tries to turn John Driscoll's head into mashed potatoes and naturally he gets a chop lets not show this footage imagine if that happened in the modern era of sports? There would be "WANTED" posters all across the US for Delligatti.

-This could have been one of the greatest meltdowns at the Wings try to kill the clock and almost blow it in the final 38 seconds (starts at 5:24 mark of the video) as Wings goalie Kevin Bilger and company try to kill the clock on their own end of the floor until they realize that the Saints will not just sit back and play patty cake until the final buzzer.
Two awful passes almost result in the Wings turning over the ball in their own end. They finally break out and you have to love with 10 seconds left John Tucker almost becomes the goat with one of the most unnecessary passes which gets picked off and results in an 2 on 0 for New York and near disaster for Philly.

-If the shorts were any shorter every player and ref would have been arrested for indecent exposure.

-The league championship trophy was called the North American Cup now that is worth some serious laughs considering at the time the league had not a single team in Canada ( The Ontario Raiders would join the league in 1998) and barley any Canadian players.

That's all for now I'll bring you more classic NLL content as the summer goes on. I'm Avry and I'm out follow me on twitter @Avry .